Ben is a funny one. We gave him a binkie (pacifier) when he was a baby and he loved it from the get-go (he was a sucker!) but by like 8 months he wasn't really interested in it anymore, so we would just leave it in his crib. Well, he got more attached to it later (for bedtime) and went through a phase of wanting it a lot when Chris was first born, since Chris would have one. So here was are, at two years and four months old, still using that dang thing to sleep. I've tried before to get rid of it slyly, "lose" it, or talk him out of it- it hasn't worked, and I haven't pushed the issue, because he gets upset about it. Today, he had Chris' binkie in his mouth (Chris has been BAD teething and has brought his with him out of bed a few times this last week)... so Ben and I had a little talk about binkies and how they were for babies and he was a big boy. I told him he didn't really need it for night-night anymore and maybe did he think he could go to sleep without it? "Yeah!" was the answer and he seemed totally okay with the idea. So, I took the thing out of his bed so it wouldn't be there at naptime, but when the time came, it was "where's my geekee, where's my geekee?" I tried to reason with him, but he was just getting so sad about it, it was more important to get him to nap at the moment. When he got up, I brought it up again, and said - we should send your binkie to a baby that needs one, since you're a big boy and you don't really need it to go night-night, do you? ("Yeah!") Should we put your binkie in a letter and send it to a baby? He LOVES letters because of Blue's Clues and he LOVES everything about babies, he loves when Elmo "talks to a baby" on Elmo's World. ("OKAY!") So we went and got an envelope and sealed the binkie up inside and then addressed it "To: Baby ; From: Ben" and drew a little stamp. Then we took it out to the mailbox for the mailman to come pick up. Then, (after splashing in the gutter water) we said bye-bye to "geekee".
I reinforced the idea on the way home tonight. I asked if he remembered earlier when we sent the binkie to the baby because he was a big boy now, etc. Then asked if he remembered that when it was bedtime, he would just have doggie and his blankie because the mailman took binkie to the baby, and he was very positive about it. He had new jammies that we picked up yesterday, and I told him they were big boy jammies. When we go up to bed, he goes into his room and gets into bed while I put Chris in his crib, then I come back to read one last story and sing a song and tuck him in. When I got back to his room, he told me "I have doggie and gaykee (blankie), but nooooo geekee! And he was just fine with that. I told him a few times how proud I was of him and what a big boy he was. We read a Little Critter story about doing things all by yourself (because you're a BIG BOY!) and then he went to sleep just fine. This all probably seems silly and boring, but to us, it is a HUGE step for our little geekee lover. He is constantly surprising us with new "grown-up" ways.
I was pleasantly surprised (and relieved) that it all worked out at bedtime. We'll see how tomorrow goes. I hope this was it!
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